Our crew,
also, began to show signs of discontent, and to murmur at having been
brought so far on a fool's errand. It was only Dirk Hartog's
indomitable personality that prevented a mutiny.
It was this same sordid greed for gain which had caused Christopher
Columbus to be sent home in chains from America because he had failed
to find gold. The acquisition of new countries did not interest those
who equipped the navigators of this time. For this reason, no attempt
was made by Hartog to take possession of any of the countries we
visited. It was to find treasure he had been sent out, and should he
return without it he might look for a surly welcome.
Yet Hartog himself, I am convinced, with the spirit of a great
navigator, found satisfaction in having accomplished so long a voyage,
to reach the goal for which he sailed.
"Can I help it, Peter," he said to me one evening when we sat together
in his cabin examining the charts I had drawn under his directions,
"that the natives of this country are poor? Gold, ivory, precious
stones, spices even, seem not to exist in the South as they do in the
East. Did I make this country, that I should be held responsible for
what it contains?"
But, although he spoke thus, I could see he was bitterly disappointed
at finding the land we had come so far to seek little better than a
wilderness, and the people upon it so poor that they went entirely
naked, and devoured each other in order to satisfy their hunger.
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